


Ubiquitous

by emo_elvis18



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Other, Reader-Insert, reader has no specified gender
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-20
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-02 12:55:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5248997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emo_elvis18/pseuds/emo_elvis18
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Messing around with "fun" values starts off, well, pretty fun. But as you dig deeper into the mysteries surrounding the life and research of the former royal scientist, you find yourself more and more entangled in a strange, cross-dimensional love affair with a man who technically no longer exists.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry this first ch is so slow... Based on some of my own theories/headcanons involving Gaster, built off of what little we know about him thus far.

The walls were caving in. Or, maybe they weren't. Hard to tell when you're walking through a real life Escher painting. It seemed to reject your presence, maybe even your very existence, as you moved further in. Places where you'd previously found a foothold disappeared by the time you'd taken your next step. And maybe the walls weren't concave, but they were definitely... Humming. That much you could be sure of. A low buzz droned on, digging deep into your ears, setting your teeth chattering. Reminding you of the fact that this place was never really meant for you to see. As if the ever changing, impossible architecture around you and all the hoops you had to jump through to even get here weren't enough of a hint.

Tentatively you ran your mind over to where your SAVE file rested. With a sigh of relief (one that you could hardly hear over the awful buzz), you found it safe and sound, resting in the same external file you’d left it in. Good enough, you figured. Even if this reality collapses around you, at least it won’t all be lost. Reviving your adventurous spirit, you wandered on ahead. Or, you headed "foward-ish". It was as much as you could say in a world that barely existed enough to have directions at all.

Usually when you messed with the "fun" values, hardly anything would change.

A weird visual glitch here or there, distorted music, endless loops of text you couldn't move past without force quitting. But sometimes, you'd find strange grey figures in places they wouldn’t otherwise appear. They all spoke of the previous royal scientist. And once, you found a strange man, hunched over in a long black robe, who disappeared as soon as you approached. Before you could get a word out. Really, a lot of what you found was downright disturbing. But you were determined (full of DETERMINATION as usual)- determined to assemble all the pieces of what had to be the Underground's final and most difficult puzzle.

"His brilliance was irreplaceable."

"Beware of the man who speaks in hands."

Those grey figures, odd versions of monsters you’d seen before, they all said weird shit like that. Well, that along with one little “beware” from the River Peron. Not that a warning from the same person who also told you to beware of every single day of the week wasn’t particularly menacing. And not like reality caving in around you brought the point home. Nah, this place was just begging for exploration. So you continued on.

The "hallway" ended. Before you stood an impenetrable wall, slate gray. Nothing this time? You wondered. But the buzzing grew louder, like your head was filled with hornets. You could feel it in your ribcage, the droning buzz burrowing its way into your lungs. Hesitantly you reached forward to place your hand on the blank gray wall. You pulled your hand away in shock when it passed straight through it, your fingers disappearing for a second into... whatever it was behind the wall. No matter how many times you had to deal with all this unreal weirdness, it never got any easier.

Your SAVE file was still safe. Behind you was a black void where the tiles you'd stepped on once were. Tipping a toe along the edge it became clear there was no way to go back; your foot hung over the edge, passing right through the now empty space. Nowhere to go but through the wall, then. Bracing yourself, you close your eyes and, with as long of strides as you could manage, you ran straight through the wall.

On the other side was a vibrantly bright room. Expecting more drab grays you flinched a little in surprise once you opened your eyes. Taking another tentative step forward, you looked back down to see the tile you'd just stepped off of still there. Did you somehow end back up in the regular ol’ Underground? That can't be right. You've played this game too many times to not have seen this place before. A long desk with various scraps of paper, post-its, and half-unfolded blueprints strewn about it lined the wall in front of you. There were a few stools and roll-y desk chairs here and there. The floor was all clean and brightly colored tile, the walls a sterile white that nearly hurt your eyes.

Walking further in you noted a small table on the other side of the room with a coffee machine and several overturned mugs, a little bowl of sugar packets, and a cream pitcher resting on top of it. And on the opposite wall, a slate gray door, which (despite its bland color) was somehow the most striking feature of this obnoxiously bright room.

It was then you noticed something which ought to have been the most obvious fact of all: the buzzing had stopped. As soon as you passed through the wall, the constant drone had ceased, replaced with noise as blank and white as the walls around you. Though that suspicious gray door was clearly calling your name (well, metaphorically, though that wouldn’t be the strangest thing to happen to you), you moved further in to examine the long desk instead. Immediately it became clear to you that you'd never be able to make any sense of those papers. All were written in awful chicken scratch and, on top of that, they consisted of the same odd little symbols you'd come across a few times before. You reached forward to grab a small, slightly more legible note only to feel your hand pass straight through the desk. You recoiled, as if having placed your hand on a hot stove instead of some... weird, immaterial desk thing. So that was a bust. Though you'd already figured it was a lost cause, you walked over to the coffee table and reached out to grab a mug. Those, too, refused to connect with your hand, which you moved back and forth through the table and its contents the way that movie characters sometimes pass their hand through holograms.

Though you despaired at this cruel world's lack of free caffeinated substances, you reluctantly pressed on to the last option this strange room offered you. The boring, totally bland gray door. It was the only thing other than the floor that had any sort of collision detection programmed into it. Though, you noted as you continued on, no sound effect played when you passed on through it. Somehow, the silence started to become even more unnerving than the previous area's buzzing.

On the other side of the door was a narrow walkway, with a windowless wall on one side and a guardrail on the other. Well, a guardrail-looking collision-less thing, at any rate, as you find that your hand passes right through that too. Wonderful. You make a point of staying a long way away from the edge, which overlooks a blank white void, with what appears to be scaffolding descending as far down into the whiteness as your eyes could comprehend. So, so far this place was a weird wing-dings run lab that designed and constructed white-out ink voids. Nice.

The walkway wrapped around the bottomless pit, the tile from the beginning of it giving way to plain concrete where the path took a right angle turn. The walls were a long gradient bright white all the way to night sky black on the other end. As per usual with these abnormal “fun” value rooms, the gray door disappeared immediately after you walked through it, leaving you no way to go back. Not that the hologram lab or the straight shot into Wonderland was all that appealing, anyway.

So all that left was the gradient wall, and the dark doorway shaped void at the end of it. You ran your fingers along it as you walked, testing for spots that you could go right through. Sure enough, the walkway's end was the only place. On that side of the hallway that didn’t face the seemingly bottomless white void, at least. And so you passed on through.

Once through, you couldn't move. Or you could, but nothing around you gave you any indication that progress was being made. Everything was as black as an especially dark, starless night. You could see your own body, your legs rising and feet plopping down as you moved them left, right... But nothing around you changed. It was if you weren't moving at all. Growing tired of all this (the least the endless glitch-y void could do was offer you some real coffee), you consider holding down ESC. But first, out of habit, you feel around for your SAVE file.

Your stomach dropped. It was nowhere to be found. There was nothing. Even if you quit, there was nothing. Even if you reloaded, there was nothing. You retch, nothing.

All you had, all you could do, was continue walking forward. Or at least, numbly putting what vaguely felt like one leg in front of the other. Even in these seemingly senseless, glitch-y areas, reality would always assert itself after a while. So you couldn't access your SAVE file right now. That's fine. It's not like you check on it every second so, maybe that's just a thing that happens sometimes. Right. So you keep walking. And you check every second if your SAVE file has reappeared yet. No dice.

A few large white blobs appeared in your line of sight. It took your eyes a while to sort the figure out from the rest of the void, but after a bit, it became clear that those blobs were all a part of a single whole. The same figure that always vanished the second you approached. The man you'd come to believe was Dr. Gaster.

A few steps further. You could tell now for a fact that you were moving forward. Gaster's back got closer and closer with every step. You felt like any second now he would register your presence and vanish, like always. But now, he was close enough now that you could reach out, you could finally ask...

"Doctor- Dr. Gaster?"

He turned. His eye sockets and mouth widened. But he remained there.

"Is- Are you Dr. Gaster?"

After a long moment, the figure gave a little nod. His cracked face had settled back down, even if just a little, but his shoulders were still hunched. His wide eye sockets seemed entirely focused on you. You take another step forward, slowly. He tenses up a bit, then looks around. For what, you can't tell. But whatever it is, there's nothing there to be found but the two of you.

"You're Dr. Gaster," you say quietly. He remained quiet. If you were wrong, he gave you no indication. You take another step forward.

Now there was hardly more than a foot of space between the two of you in a place where distance was otherwise impossible to judge. After what felt like a long moment, he raised his hand, thumb tucked in, tapped his fingers lightly against his forehead, and did a little wave. The sign for “hello.”

“Oh!” You said, mostly to yourself. You repeated the sign back to him.

He smiled, though he still looked… Sorrowful, almost. His empty sockets narrowed a little and he seemed to relax. He signed, “What is your name?”

You spelt it, signing letter by letter. He nodded. Tilting his head down to the ground, he didn’t respond for a long while. His lack of movement made the silence a lot more salient.

Eventually, he looked back up at you. He frowned, his face grew intense. “You shouldn’t be here,” he signed, movements stiff.

Before you can respond, the game crashes.

You check. Your SAVE file is right back where it should be.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter. Sans shows up.

When you reload, you’re back in Snowdin. The friendliest frosted over little town in all of the Underground (not that there were as many competitors for that title as there were for, say, Ultimate Nose Nuzzle champions). You headed past the shops and upwards, towards the river. There the river person waited, as always, for someone to come along and ride in their boat with them. You request a ride to Hotland, and off you go, listening to the river person hum all the while as their boat happily skipped along the waves.

Mechanically and with only a vague sense of where you wanted to go, you thanked the river person and made your way to the elevators. L1 to R3 to the HTT Resort, through the lobby, and to the CORE. Once you reached the corridor leading into the CORE, you felt a strong sense of dread, worse than the first time you walked through the dark forest path out of the RUINS. Taking a deep breath, you move on through the sliding doors and try your best to quell your nerves.

At the very least, you think, you’d already dealt with all the CORE’s trials (the guards, puzzles, fight against Mettaton… the general twists and turns of the ever changing hallways). For now, you could just take your time and explore all the little nooks and crannies you may have missed during all the other hijinks. Or try to, since there was hardly anything you’d left to see that didn’t involve tapping into the game’s code. At any rate, you make a right past the elevator and into the side room overlooking the fire-y pit. Maybe surrounding yourself with some black voids and hellfire would calm your nerves. For some reason. But the sense that you were being watched wouldn’t cease. It was worse than the first time you discovered all of Alphys’s little hidden cameras.

You sat down near the edge of the pit and tried to find comfort in the warmth rising from the flames below. After a while of watching the fires flickering and letting your toes dangle, you lean back, try to relax and…

You find a familiar pair of big ol’ eye sockets staring down at you. Letting out a little yelp, you scramble to pull yourself away from the edge, lest you fright cause you to fall in.

“Sans! What are you doing here?” You say once you’ve recovered somewhat.

He shrugs, and offers you a hand to help you up. He stuffs it back into his pocket once you’re back on your feet. “what’re you doing here, anyway?”

“Huh? I was just wandering around, y’know-,”

“no, what are you still doing here?” He repeats, his eyes going dark. His head is titled downwards.

“I…” The sense of dread returns. “What do you mean?”

Sans looks back up, eyes returning back to normal. He casts his gaze off to the side. “you’ve been _wandering around_ for, uh, a while, haven’t you?” He looks straight at you. “you were pretty set on getting to the end before, but now that the way’s open…”

There was still Asgore to deal with, but he was right. You could basically walk right out of here and end this play through altogether. Unsure of what to say, you cast your eyes down to your feet.

“look, I’m not the sort to tell others how to live their lives but,” he paused. You met his gaze. “you sure you know what you’re doing?”

His eyes went dark. For the second time in the span of a few minutes you felt your stomach drop. You flinched and turned away. Sans had made it clear several times before that he was well aware of many of the game’s mechanics. But he couldn’t know anything about your recent little adventures, could he?

Before you could respond, he seemed to calm down a little. “well, I said it before, didn’t I? I trust ya, kid.” By the time you looked up he was already gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've uh written so much of this shit at like 3 am while super hungover so... Hope yall enjoy anyway haha.... Let me know what I can do to fix things/improve! Thanks for reading


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do ex-scientists who've had their consciousness scattered across space and time like knock knock jokes? I think a better question is, who DOESN'T like knock knock jokes? As usual, hope you guys like it, feel free to let me know what you think!

Once the game had crashed the last time, your "fun" and other levels had been set back to normal. After trying a few different combinations, you finally regained access to the long, crumbling corridor as before. You rushed along, tiles falling away behind you. Through the wall, back into the little lab. So far so good. You stopped for a moment in the bright room. Hardly anything had changed. You noticed the papers seemed to be arranged a little differently than before, blue prints with added illegible notes in their margins. One of the mugs from the other table had been moved to the desk. Otherwise, everything was as it was before. Most importantly, the gray door had returned. Wasting no more time you pushed on through it, walking quickly along the walkway, past the scaffolding, through the dark at the end of the hall.

Soon enough you were back to Gaster's spot. He was, as before, slightly stooped over, milling about in the darkness. He looked up as you approached.

"Hello," he signed. You couldn't really read his expression but he didn't seem all that upset for someone who told you to go away and forced you out of your game. So that's good.

You smile and sign hello back. Both of you were quiet for a while. What could you say to him? How are you? That might not go all too well. You doubted the endless black void had weather, so that wouldn’t work, either. Thinking back to Toriel’s suggested conversation starters…

“So, um… What did the skeleton tile his roof with?”

Gaster looked up at you in surprise.

You put on your best goofy smile, “ _Shin-gles!”_ You laughed a little awkwardly. Maybe he’d heard that one before but, in the moment, you couldn’t really think of a better joke.

He smiled and then looked down. After a moment, he raised a hand to his mouth, giving the sign for “Thank you.”

“Huh? Yeah, no problem!” You said. Maybe it wasn’t the best joke in the world, but he seemed to appreciate it.

Before you could say anything else, he began signing again. He made a gesture like he was knocking on a door.

“Knock knock?” You asked.

He nodded happily, and continued. “Knock knock,”

“Who’s there?”

“Lettuce.”

“Lettuce who?”

“Lettuce in, it’s cold outside!”

You laughed a little, despite yourself. “Nice one,” you tell him. He squints happily.

After another long silence, he starts signing again, this time looking a lot less happy. “I’d tell you that you shouldn’t be here, but,” he hesitates, “you’ll just come back, won’t you?”

For a moment, you’re not sure how to respond. He was probably right, anyway. He’d already warned you once to leave. He even flat out forced you to leave, basically. But even once they’ve disappeared you could always get the gray doors to come back by altering values here or there or restarting, so it seemed that he wouldn’t really be able to stop you, when it came down to it.

“Do you… Want me to not come back?”

He smiled sadly. “It’d be better if you forgot about me,” he tells you.

“I don’t want to forget about you,” you say. He once again looks taken aback. “I’ll come back,” you tell him determinedly. “Uh, do you…” it only now occurred to you to ask, “Do you want me to bring you anything?” Was it even possible to bring stuff here? You could still access your inventory, so you assumed it was. It was worth a shot, at least.

“Pasta,” he replied, almost immediately.

“Pasta?”

He paused. “I hear… A lot about pasta. I want to remember what it’s like.”

“Well… Alright, if that’s what you want.” You gave him a big grin, “See you later!”

He smiled and waved as you closed out the game.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand we're back to some slightly longer chapters. Because of this, it'll probably take me longer to get the next few out, but I'm on winter break right now so hopefully there won't be too much of a delay. Anyway, enjoy a lil cameo from Undyne and Papyrus. Shout out to everyone who's left feedback so far, I really appreciate it!

You load up your regular old SAVE file and head to Sans and Papyrus’s house. It was the only place you could think to go, since there wasn’t, like, a pasta store anywhere in the Underground. At any rate, they were likely too busy with their various duties to care much if you borrowed the kitchen for a little while. The space in front of the house where Undyne and Papyrus usually hung out empty by the time you arrived. Uncertainly, you knocked on the door. The muffled sound of a few crashes and bangs came from behind the door before it finally opened. You instinctively take a step back, fearing some sort of avalanche to pour out from behind it.

It’s Undyne who answers. “Hey, human!” She grins, tomato sauce on her face. “You’re just in time for the lesson!”

“Oh no, you’re not gonna burn this house down too, are you?”

“No way! Well…” She pauses, “Nah, of course not!” She says, waving that thought away.

She moves back and lets you step into the house. “Making spaghetti again?” You ask, wiping the snow from your shows on the entry mat.

“Yeah!” She replied excitedly, leading you into the kitchen. Unsurprisingly, various pots, pans, lids, and other utensils were scattered about the counter and floor. A small waterfall of reddish goop ran from a thick puddle near the edge of the counter right next to the stove, dribbling off and splatting down into another, smaller puddle on the tile floor.

At least nothing is on fire, you think. As if on cue, you notice one of the burners on the empty stove top has been left on. You casually turn it off while Papyrus and Undyne are off preparing… something on the other side of the kitchen.

“So! You here for round two?!” Undyne turns to ask you as she simultaneously launches a dirty saucepan up into the ridiculously tall sink. Some stray flecks of tomato sauce rain down.

“I… guess?” Seems like the best way to acquire something spaghetti-like, at least. Maybe Gaster won’t be able to tell the difference.

“Alright! Get ready, you’ll be cooking with _two_ master chefs today!” Undyne flexed. Good thing there wasn’t anything suplex-able in here, though that’s never stopped her before.

Papyrus seems happy. “Great! Don’t feel bad if you have trouble keeping up, it took a lot of training to become the culinary masters we are today!”

“Yeah!” Undyne laughed.

“I’ll keep that in mind.” You start clearing a little area of the counter, examining whatever utensils you could find for a few clean ones. The dirty ones you passed over to Undyne, who slam dunked them with the rest in the sink.

Papyrus, meanwhile, was busy reorganizing his refrigerator to make room for that day’s “culinary masterpieces”. Every so often he’d pull out a particular Tupperware container, read the label, and give a little anecdote about the day it was cooked.

“It’d be better if you had a hot fridge to store those,” Undyne said, glancing over at Papyrus. “The cold ruins our culinary brilliance!”

He shook his head and continued on. The rest of Papyrus’s stories were drowned out in the clatter of moving silverware and Undyne’s rather violent way of washing dishes.

“I don’t think this is a situation that requires magical energy spears,” you suggest to no avail.

“You gotta show all that grime whose boss!” Undyne shouted back as she continued on attempting to vanquish dried bits of food the only way she knew how, apparently. Suds spilled out over the edges, leaving another puddle on the tile floor.

Undyne leaves the more stubborn dishes to soak and goes to assist Papyrus in his spaghetti archiving. In the meantime, you’d dug up a few useable kitchen tools and got to work. First, you’d need to get some water boiling. You turn, hands on the handles of a reasonably clean stock pot, to face the towering sink. Staring it down for a long moment, you consider just getting water from the bathroom sink instead, when Undyne notices.

“Can’t reach?” She grinned, “Here,” she said, giving little warning before hoisting you up.

You yelp in surprise but quickly regain yourself. You fill the pot, reaching over the still somewhat dirty (and now much dented) discarded utensils. You get as much water in as you can, holding the handles with shaky hands, and ask Undyne to bring you back down. Some of the water sloshes out as she drops you, a little roughly, about a foot off the floor.

With the pot on the stove, you figured you could relax for a little bit while waiting for it to boil.

Undyne reaches for the burner dial. “C’mon, you gotta crank up the heat!”

Hadn’t she learned? “No, just… Trust me on this one.” You wave her hands away and step back in front of the stove. Looks like you’re gonna have to guard it for a while. You leaned against the counter and waited.

Papyrus finally shut the fridge and stood up straight, hands on his hips. “Well, another day of culinary excellence under my belt!”

“Yeah! You’re getting better every day,” Undyne says, grinning widely.

“Good job, Papyrus,” you added, giving a little thumbs up.

            Papyrus beamed. “Perfect timing, too! My favorite show is on!” He happily nyeh-heh-ed his way out of the kitchen and into the living room. Undyne followed. Shortly after, you heard the TV click on and Mettaton’s “cooking with a killer robot” show start up.

            The kitchen felt a lot bigger now that you had it to yourself. Not that the others were very far away, of course, but it still felt a little too wide open without Undyne and Papyrus scurrying around, bumping into you every so often. At any rate, the water was boiling rapidly now. You hunt down a still partially full box of noodles and dump them in. Farther back in the pantry, you found an unopened can of spaghetti sauce and dumped that into a smaller sauce pan and stuck it on the stove as well. Maybe your dish wouldn’t be completely homemade but as long as it was edible it didn’t matter much, you figured. With all that done, you set the timer. Stirring occasionally (though Undyne would disapprove), you let your mind wander.

            You would have to go there to be sure, but you could swear the hologram lab you go through to get to the center of Gaster’s scattered consciousness looks vaguely like Alphys’s lab. Or, at least, it looks more and more like it every time you pass through it. The CORE, too, while initially a confusing mess of long hallways and enemy encounters and puzzles, seemed to draw you in more and more. Maybe the scaffolding room was what the CORE looked like when it was being built, you thought. That would make sense, since Gaster was the one who built it.

            With those thoughts running through your mind, you searched around the kitchen for a strainer, as it was getting close to the time to take the pasta off the stove. More importantly, you’d need a way to dump out the boiling water up in the tall sink without burning yourself. The strainer you found shortly before the timer went off. Rather than calling Undyne or Papyrus over to lift you up, you hastily decided to strain the pasta over an empty, larger pot left on the edge of the counter near the sink. Undyne had cleaned it fairly well, though she left a huge dent at the bottom from her energy spear method. It sat a little slanted because of this. You propped it up as straight as you could using an oven mitt and set the strainer inside and, carefully, you poured the pasta into it, turning your head away to avoid the steam.

            All in all it looked alright. Digging out a clean Tupperware container from a cabinet under the counter, you dumped the spaghetti and some of the heated up sauce into it and stirred it with a fork. Sticking the lid on, you sent the completed dish to your inventory. Interestingly, you noted that if used in battle it would heal about 30 HP, not that you would need it. With a sigh of relief at this oddly arduous task complete, you headed out of the kitchen to say goodbye to Undyne and Papyrus and head out to the endless black void once more.

            Papyrus looked a little disappointed. “You should stay and watch TV with us!”

            “Uh, well,” You glanced over to it. Mettaton was shoving ingredients to the side to make room for him to lay across the counter.

            “This episode was on before, but it’s one of my favorites,” Papyrus says.

            “You say that about every episode,” Undyne adds, glancing at the television and rolling her eye.

            “That’s because they’re all my favorite!” He replies, grinning at Undyne. “I liked the episode you were on too, human!” He looks back over at you.

            “Sorry,” You smile apologetically, “I, uh, have other plans today.” You make your way to the door.

            “Alright. See you later, punk!” Undyne says with a wink. Or maybe she was just blinking.

            “Bye-bye!” Papyrus waves rapidly as you walk out the door, giving a little wave back.

            You step back out into the cold. To get back to Gaster’s place you’d have to SAVE, then exit and alter the “fun” values once more. You trod through the snow to Snowdin’s cross town tunnel to shorten the trip to the SAVE point. Hopefully the spaghetti will still be in your inventory when you get there, you think. You sigh again, no longer feeling your relief from earlier.


End file.
